I’ve found that people with really high emotional intelligence are “not responsible for other people’s emotions”!
It is very tiring to be always responsible for other people’s emotions! It’s especially tiring when you meet someone with low emotional intelligence.
They are always angry somehow, or they expect too much from you, and they are disappointed.
As long as you are not sorry for him, there is no need for excessive internal consumption, you can not control the emotions of others, only to have a clear conscience.
The real high emotional intelligence is to make yourself and others comfortable, not only to satisfy others.
I have found that people with really high emotional intelligence are not responsible for the emotions of others, so they can live calmly and freely.
1. You don’t need to take responsibility for other people’s emotions.
My coworker Jane got upset when I told her I couldn’t help her finish a project over the weekend. At first I felt guilty and stressed about disappointing her. But then I realized her emotions were not my responsibility — I needed time for myself. I learned to set healthy boundaries.
When you push yourself to help others, it can sometimes make the outcome worse, and it’s wiser to say “no” when appropriate.
Because you have a grudge, not willingly, you end up not doing the work, not doing it well, and destroying the relationship.
If someone is disappointed by your refusal, that’s an emotion they have to deal with on their own, not yours.
The idea that it is your right to be disappointed is important to us because it gives us more choices.
Why can’t someone be disappointed? Because they have irrational beliefs in their mind, such as “I should never let anyone down, or else ……”.
Such a fear ties him to an exhausting lifestyle, and he may participate in various activities for the sake of his friends, regardless of his health and exhaustion.
He may feel scared or guilty when he doesn’t want to attend gatherings of people he doesn’t know very well or activities he doesn’t like.
What they don’t understand is that when someone suddenly invites you to an activity,
you can politely decline without feeling guilty because it is your right to do so.
Otherwise, your life will be overloaded and eventually run out of power, so how do you determine what is reasonable to refuse?
2. There is a difference between disappointment and letdown.
My friend Sam asked if he could stay at my place for 2 weeks. I politely declined since that’s too long for a houseguest. He was disappointed, but I didn’t feel I let him down — his expectations were unreasonable. I can’t fulfill every request just to avoid someone’s disappointment.
But when someone is nice to us, under normal circumstances, we should be nice to them as well. This is the basic principle of being a human being unless there are special circumstances.
For example, if you meet a suitor you don’t like, and you don’t want him, you’re asking for trouble if you respond to him.
If someone is very nice to you, but when he asks for something, you refuse, this is called letting him down, and those who are unwilling to return favors will end up with no one around them.
It’s not the same as letting someone down because they only ask for what they want, but it’s different when they let someone down because they have too high of expectations.
For example, a coworker expects you to finish his job, which is his responsibility, but he thinks you are nice and should help him out.
Such unreasonable expectations should have disappointed him, and you are not at all at fault.
You didn’t mean to let him down, you just drew reasonable boundaries, and you can’t fulfill everyone’s expectations.
But some people, when they realize that someone else might be unhappy, try to do something to stop it, taking the emotional burden of the other person onto themselves.
Once we get involved in someone else’s emotional world and try to change their emotions,
we have to give up our boundaries and our separate selves.
The lack of clear boundaries in such relationships makes it easy to be influenced by other people’s emotions and tires out one’s own life, and such people tend to have the following misconceptions.
3. The myth of the overburdened
As a people pleaser, I used to think I had to make everyone happy all the time. I would say yes to unreasonable demands and put others’ needs first. I finally realized their emotions are not my duty. Now I focus on my own happiness while being considerate of others. I can’t control how they feel.
The “over-burdened” often have this myth:
If he is unhappy, I am responsible, I can’t just care about my happiness, I have to do something to make him happy.
At this point, stop and ask yourself, is the unhappiness of others because of you, or because of their hearts?
The truth is, that everyone is responsible for their own emotions.
We all know that a person’s happiness depends on how they feel and perceive the world.
“In cognitive therapy, a fundamental principle about how we feel has been verified countless times
— our emotions about an event depend on how we perceive it.
That is, a person’s mood at the moment is related to his inner depth, level of awareness, and subconsciousness, not to events in the external world.
Whether we are happy or not depends not on the event itself, but on how we react to it, and how we perceive it.
It is our right to be unhappy, but we try to control and change other people’s emotions.
This is the reason why so many intimate relationships cannot withstand the negative energy test, one partner gets caught up in the other’s emotions, believing that he or she is so important that he or she can change the other person, and blaming the other person’s unhappiness on the fact that he or she is not good enough.
I’ve learned that I’m not responsible for others’ emotions. Trying to fix their unhappiness only hurts me. I have the right to set boundaries and say no when appropriate. Disappointment is natural — I can’t prevent it by overextending myself. As long as I have a clear conscience, I don’t need to take on emotional burdens that aren’t mine. This mindset has brought me more inner peace and healthy relationships.
As long as you have a clear conscience, you should graciously refuse, which is your right, so that you can protect your life.
Otherwise, a lot of people who don’t have a sense of proportion will keep crossing the line and throwing their problems at you, not trying to make an effort, but just wanting to rely on you.
A lot of people are like ghosts, throwing their problems at you, but they don’t want to think about them at all.
When you provide him with information, he politely says thank you, and then asks the same question shortly afterward, because he didn’t read the information.
He didn’t read the information because he didn’t want to read it. He wanted to get a quick and easy answer from you, and if you answered his question, he kept questioning you and getting tangled up in the process.
When you meet such a person, you don’t have to fully cooperate with him, otherwise, he will relentlessly take up all your time, and as long as you don’t want to reply to him, he will blame you.
Some people can’t be helped because they are ungrateful.
These people are characterized by laziness, they come to you because they want to save time, and if you don’t give them direct answers or help them directly, you are doing them a disservice.
The second example is that if a coworker asks you to work a full day shift for five days to follow a star, do you want to say yes for fear of ruining your relationship? Of course not.
You will be exhausted, so just let him down!
It’s his fault in the first place, and he wasn’t thinking of you when he made the request.
It’s okay to be hated by someone like that because even if you take over for him, he’ll hate you for something else some other time because he’s selfish.
As long as you don’t owe the other person anything, you can decide whether to fulfill his request or not as you wish, instead of just agreeing to it.
If he is not happy, it is his business. If you try to satisfy him, you will be the unhappy one.
If you are in a relationship, always very happy, very happy, then no doubt, the other party must not be very happy, because he has been with you.
A really good relationship allows the other person to be himself, accepting that he will occasionally make you unhappy,
for example, you want him to be with you, but he wants to be alone.
That’s what makes a relationship healthy and long-lasting.
